Extremist flyers flood a Kuwaiti university’s campus
Kuwait’s only state university has been recently swarmed by flyers targeting female students who are engaging in un-Islamic behavior and are not wearing the veil.
The campus of the University of Kuwait, located in the capital Kuwait City, has been flooded with flyers urging female students to don the Islamic veil, and criticized the flaring political tension in the Gulf country between anti-government MPs and the prime minister.
In the flyers, Islamists from the National Union of Kuwaiti Students described their non-veiled female colleagues as immoral and bound to go to hell. The union is run by students known for their close ties with the Constitutional Movement, the Kuwaiti version of the Muslim Brotherhood.
One of the flyers which read "I am back with my heart and responding to God" called the female students to wear the veil and accused unveiled ones of choosing beauty over piety and of having hell as their makeup.
The flyers contained several phrases that slammed unveiled students like "unveiled women are out of God’s mercy" and "if you give up the veil to hear flirtatious phrases then you can give up any other precious things."
Distributing the flyers was initiated by a female student at the university’s Girls’ College. At first she started a religious competition that encourages girls to wear the veil, but when the university administration stopped her, she started to distribute the flyers in front of the university gates and in parking lots.
In June, the university’s administration issued a law that forces students to wear decent clothes. The new law prohibits wearing revealing outfit such as shorts, miniskirts and clothes with indecent words printed on them as well as flashy accessories.
Condemnation by the university
The administration of the University of Kuwait issued Monday a statement, of which AlArabiya.net obtained a copy, voicing its concern over the recent prevalence of flyers distributed by students on campus without permission.
According to the statement, several ideologues in the Kuwaiti society are responsible for the propagation of extremist ideas that reach youths who in turn try to impose them on their university colleagues.
The distribution of flyers is subject to a set of regulations that students violated when they did not obtain permission from the Students Affairs Division, said Faisal Meqisad, the official spokesman of the University of Kuwait.
"The university is not open for anyone to do as they please," Meqisad said."Freedom of expression has to be practiced in a responsible manner and there are legitimate channels for doing so."
He added that in addition to spreading chaos in the campus, students’ behavior give a negative impression to the international community about Kuwait and its educational institutions.
"The media and local press are starting to talk about this issue and this tarnishes our image."
He said that the administration will penalize those responsible for the distribution of the flyers for violating laws that regulate campus activities.
"We won’t be lenient. The university is a beacon of knowledge and science and promotes freedom of expression granted by the Kuwaiti constitution yet within the law."